Football
Nick Simko, Football (1), 2018
April 6 – 21, 2018
OPENING RECEPTION: Friday, April 6, 6-9pm
Artist Talk: Monday, April 9, 4-5 PM, UNM College of Fine Arts, Room 1020
Football is a manifestation of the cultural processes that shape male-identified formations of body. Using a visual vocabulary that hovers between photography and painting, these works on paper explore the aspects of heroism, romance, and idealized gender role play embedded in representations of college football players.
Exceptional Visual Artist Scholar Series
Football is Nick Simko’s UNM MFA Photo thesis exhibition and the first of two exhibitions in 2018 that is part of Sanitary Tortilla Factory’s Exceptional Visual Artist Scholar Series. The Exceptional Visual Artist Scholar Series offers professional space for the culminating exhibition that defines the student’s launch into their profession as an artist. The series hopes to underscore exceptional artists attending regional institutions while highlighting Albuquerque’s historic connection to contemporary art practice.
About the Artist
Nick Simko is an interdisciplinary artist. Simko’s work has been exhibited at museums and galleries throughout the United States including the Walters Art Museum, The University of New Mexico Art Museum, 516 Arts, and Hillyer Arts Space. Simko holds a BFA degree in Art History, Theory & Criticism from the Maryland Institute College of Art and is presently completing an MFA in Photography at the University of New Mexico.
Migrations
neiiKAI [we walk around…], Dinétah diyogíj, Eric-Paul Rienge, 62”x38”, 2017
MIGRATIONS
curated by Candy Nartonis and Ellen Babcock
March 2 – March 30 , 2018
OPENING RECEPTION: Friday, March 2, 6-9pm
Migrations contextualizes human migration so that it can be mourned, accepted, embraced, and even in some circumstances celebrated. In our present world, millions of people have been forced to leave their homes. Political danger, famine, earthquakes, fire, rising water, and personal tragedy have caused so many human beings, world-wide, to experience displacement. Forced migration and movement made by choice are two sides of this range of journeys motivated by survival and by dreams of a better life. Important to this story are the migrations to find better and more suitable work and to reconnect with family.
Albuquerque as a city and Alburqueños as a people recognize the richness that migrations have brought to our state. As a group we have been particularly sensitive to the problems our new neighbors encounter. We reached out to many concerned groups while we planned this exhibition and the related events. They have all helped tell this story of current and historic migration.
Migrations touches on the sanctuary movement, the difficulty of crossing national borders, and threats of deportation. It will include community members who migrated or have family stories to tell. We’ll include supporting materials such as maps and histories. A room representing a safe place will fill the center of the gallery space. Inside this space, you will hear personal accounts of forced exodus, uprooted families, war and political and natural events that compel people to move. You will be able to add your own story or consider what you would do if you found yourself in this situation.
Artists and scholars contributing to the exhibition:
Ellen Babcock, Adam Herrera, Evey Jones, Israel F. Haros Lopez, Troy Lovato, David Mora, Candy Nartonis, Zeke Peña, Reed Perkins, Eric-Paul Riege, Jim Roeber, Carol Weber
Related Events:
Sunday, March 4: New Mexicans in Movement: off-site
First of the series: Sunday, March 4, 10am-12pm
We are sponsoring a series of guided walks to interact, share and connect with New Mexican global wanderers; persons for whom migration has defined their lives and the personality of our state. Among the hosts are successful innovators, former diplomats, misfits, multi-generational New Mexicans, as well as recent arrivals. These walks are created by Sidni Lamb at Mindful New Mexico. Check Mindful New Mexico website
http://www.mindfulnewmexico.com/ for dates, locations, and descriptions of walks in the series.
Saturday, March 10: 7pm, The Sanitary Tortilla Factory
Israel F. Haros Lopez performs Mexican Jazz
Poems of migration from his recent publication of Mexican Jazz, a graphic codex novel about women and children in detention centers. He will also be reading excerpts form his latest works, La Llorona Xronciles and Ghostbraids. La llorona Xronicles retells the classic story of La Llorona, the weeping woman and interrupts narratives of myths and oral histories. Ghostbraids is an exploration of Chicano poetry, experimenting with bilingualism, immigration and diverse poetic forms, visual poetry, improvisation and soundscapes, each reading of these works become site specific.
Saturday, March 24, 5-7pm, The Sanitary Tortilla Factory
Potluck Dinner and Music: you are all invited to this celebration of gifts. Bring a food offering from your homeland, write your family history, meet others.
We’ll supply plates and forks, drinks, and food from around the world.
Visiting Curator Talk with Rachel Cook
ABOUT RACHEL COOK
As curator of DiverseWorks in Houston, TX, Rachel Cook is passionate about the organization’s mission to “commission, produce, and present new and daring art in all its forms through innovative collaborations that honor each artist’s vision without constraint.” Her curatorial work reconsiders the relationship between images and objects, and investigates methods of delegation embedded within performative and participatory work. She has helped to organize commissioned projects with Tony Feher, Liz Magic Laser, Heather and Ivan Morison, Wu Tsang, Pepe Mar, and Chelsea Knight and Mark Tribe.
Her writing has appeared in a number of art journals and catalogues, including Modern Painters, Flash Art, and the Prospect 3 catalogue. Prior to joining DiverseWorks, Cook worked for dOCUMENTA(13)’s publication team, and was a fellow for the International Studio & Curatorial Program, New York. She holds a Masters from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College and a Bachelors from the San Francisco Art Institute.
Cook has recently been appointed Creative Director of On the Boards in Seattle, WA. Her visit is organized in partnership with ICI and with full financial support provided by Common Field.
Flight (01)
A Benefit Event for Immigration Awareness
SATURDAY, JANUARY 27, 2018
5-8pm
524 Central NW
Mercedez Holtry performs @ 6pm
250 FREE TACOS by El Paisa
Mercedez Holtry Jodie Herrera Sheri Crider Kei & Molly Textiles
A group of artists are gathering forces to create a visual, spoken word event that benefits the NM Dream Team, New Mexico Immigrant Law Center & the Santa Fe Dreamers Project.
Flight (01) is the first of three events that is partially sponsored by the Right of Return Fellowship which invests in formerly incarcerated artists to create original works that can further criminal justice reform in partnership with advocates and organizers. Sheri Crider is 1 of 7 inaugural recipient’s of this fellowship. As part of Flight (01) four visual artists will create works that amplify the conversation surrounding immigration and mass incarceration. Each artist brings their own signature work to the event as a collectible item. The proceeds benefit local organizations that support community members impacted by these issues. Jodie Herrera has designed a custom tote with a recent design informed by her recent body of work, Women Across Borders. Kei and Molly have designed one of their gorgeous linens with migratory birds that are featured in limited edition bird mobiles by Sheri Crider. The birds design are conceptually tied to currently detained immigrants at Cibola Detention Center. Flight will grow over the year in a series of events, culminating in a large scale installation and series of events at the University of New Mexico Art Museum in August.
Mercedez Holtry is a slam poet, writer, mentor, and Chicana feminist. Holtry has represented ABQ on multiple final and semi-final stages for national poetry events and holds multiple Albuquerque Slam titles. She has worked with youth in poetry workshops in multiple cities around the country and hosts a monthly poetry reading called “Lobo Slam”.
Jodie Herrera is a visual artist and curator from Taos, New Mexico. She is of both Native and Hispanic descent. Herrera works as an illustrator, muralist, a mixed-media artist, and curator all while predominantly focusing on oil painting. Herrera’s art has been featured in such settings as The Anderson Museum of Contemporary Arts, The Art and History Museum of Santa Cruz, The Albuquerque Art and History Museum, 516 Gallery, Beautiful Bizarre Magazine, Center for Contemporary Arts Santa Fe, among many others.
Photography by Marla Bros/Albuquerque Journal
Sheri Crider is a visual artist, a community builder, a civil rights dreamer, living and working in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The seemingly innate ability to draw and create was the key to recovering from many years of drug addicted, homelessness and incarceration. sheri has a BFA from the University of Arizona and a MFA from the University of New Mexico.
copyright Mary Hobbs
Kei and Molly live in the high desert of Albuquerque, New Mexico. We founded Kei & Molly Textiles, LLC in 2010 to create both a printing studio dedicated to producing artisan-quality fabric goods as well as a vehicle to develop good jobs in our community. The studio is located in the International District of Albuquerque, an area home to many of the refugees and recent immigrants to our city. Vibrant with culture, it is nonetheless one of Albuquerque’s pockets of poverty. We are committed to creating good jobs in this area, and work with refugee resettlement programs to find many of our employees.
FOR MORE INFO: CONTACT SHERI CRIDER @ sherilcrider@gmail.com or call 505.228.3749
Interior Landscapes
31°19’19.10”N; 109°29’47.62”W: And Golden Light, 2017, video still, courtesy of Bockley Gallery
POSTCOMMODITY ERIC PAUL-RIEGE
M. JENEA SANCHEZ TARA EVONNE TRUDELL
INTERIOR LANDSCAPES
JANUARY 26 – FEBRUARY 23, 2018
OPENING RECEPTION: Friday, January 26th 6-9pm
Performances: Opening night 7pm and February 23rd 7pm
Interior Landscapes is an exhibition presented by Sanitary Tortilla Factory and 516 ARTS as part of a collaboration for “The US-Mexico Border: Place, Imagination, and Possibility”. Interior Landscapes co-curated by Daryl Lucero and sheri crider. The exhibition focus is on the lived experience of people on the U.S.-Mexico border. Elemental to these stories are the absence of political demarcations. Where the border suggests a bifurcation of territoriality, there also exists the space between the north and south.
The artists in this exhibit find themselves living in varying proximities with the border—Arizona, New Mexico, and Sonora. Although the artists vary in social, cultural, and geographical distances, the work engages communities situated on the border. The works are collaborative and signify the reciprocal nature in which borders can be negotiated, and recreated to benefit those within them.
The works are examples of socially engaged art that humanize the border wall and its symbol of national identity, culture, and politics. And what we see are the acts that speak to living in a place of tension, violence, and creativity. The border becomes possessed by the humanity of those within it. What we witness are the stories, experiences, and truths not of the artists, but through the medium of conversation between the artists and communities. We witness the creativity of people and place.
In Border Tapestry (2009) M. Jenea Sanchez teases the absence of the border wall by transforming its purpose to divide and uses it to unite. Sanchez utilizes the steel structure as a loom to weave, to recall and connect to the “familial roots of the border communities, the families that are separated by the fence, and the days when movement across was more fluid and natural rather than militarized.”
Tara Evonne Trudell’s work physically transforms the words and messages of those living within the border area. Tara Evonne Trudell hosts poetry workshops with communities situated on the border. In these workshops, participants create poems that are then created into beads which become long strands of poetry. Tara Evonne Trudell see this work as a way to “address the realities of trying to cross the border: a trip plagued with dangerous environments and a heavily militarized zone.”
From the outside looking in, the border can be flat and two-dimensional. These works bring to light the life within. The border is animated, mocked, teased, and made human.
Click here to read the exhibition brochure
Thank you to 516 ARTS for making this exhibition possible.
516 ARTS US-Mexico Boarder Program Guide
